Kukulcan's Realm ─ Urban Life at Ancient Mayapan

Masson and Peraza Lope's detailed overview provides evidence of a vibrant market economy that played a critical role in the city's political and economic success. They offer new perspectives from the homes of governing elites, secondary administrators, affluent artisans, and poorer members of the service industries. Household occupational specialists depended on regional trade for basic provisions that were essential to crafting industries, sustenance, and quality of life. Settlement patterns reveal intricate relationships of households with neighbors, garden plots, cultivable fields, thoroughfares, and resources. Urban planning endeavored to unite the cityscape and to integrate a pluralistic populace that derived from hometowns across the Yucatan peninsula.

New data from Mayapan, the pinnacle of Postclassic Maya society, contribute to a paradigm change regarding the evolution and organization of Maya society in general and makeKukulcan's Realm a must-read for students and scholars of the ancient Maya and Mesoamerica.

Marilyn A. Masson is professor of anthropology at the University of Albany, State University of New York, and codirector of the Economic Foundations of Mayapan Project.

Carlos Peraza Lope is project director with Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Antropolog?a in M?rida, Yucatan, and codirector of the Economic Foundations of Mayapan Project.